The Future Of Entrepreneurship | Swish Goswami

What is the future of entrepreneurship and personal brand building? Swish Goswami joins Connor to discuss.

You might be thinking, “What can I learn about entrepreneurship from a 20-year-old?” The answer, as it turn out, is quite a bit.

For starters, Swish has a lot to say about how to build a personal brand by leveraging a platform that most young people ignore — LinkedIn. But perhaps more importantly, how does the mind of a millennial (or more Gen Z) work? As Swish shares in this podcast, that turns out to be important.

Choosing a Platform

Most people, especially those under 35, think of LinkedIn as a boring place to leave a resume and ignore. You might go back and check it every couple of weeks but you don’t actually do much on it. And this is a big part of the reason Swish chose LinkedIn as his go-to platform.

While most of his age cohort spend their days on Snapchat and Instagram, Swish is writing articles on LinkedIn. Why? Because, some people are adept at taking pictures. Swish, on the other hand, is a good writer. When choosing a platform, Swish identified that Instagram and Snapchat were too noisy, but also he wanted to choose a platform where he could maximize his skillset.

A lot of people want to build a personal brand on social media, but very few seem to understand the formula.

First, you have to be a genuinely good person. You have to actually care about the people you’re connecting with. Swish points out that when you first connect with someone on social media it’s important to make a real connection.

He reaches out to them directly to see if there is a way to help them. He suggests hopping on a call with them to get to know them. People never forget that, which is how you create real relationships in virtual spaces.

Why LinkedIn Worked For Swish

Another important piece about building a personal brand is to get to know the platform you’re trying to master. The only way to do that is to be not only a producer/poster on that platform but to also be a user/consumer.

People are constantly saying, “Follow me on this platform.” But Swish points out that there usually is little reason to do so. Unless you’re spending your time there and engaging in conversations with people on that platform, following you is a waste of their time.

Since people are looking for real connections, you have to select a platform you’ll be willing to spend time engaging on. You can’t expect success on any platform you won’t also enjoy spending time on.

Since Swish loves to write and therefore spends time on the platform, he treats it as a consumer does and as a result has gotten to know it well.

Collaboration is Key

Once you’ve selected a platform and are getting the knack of it, start looking for opportunities to collaborate. What does that look like? It’s not a matter of following each other around your social platform of choice and liking each others posts.

First, reach out to people with similar sized followings. But make sure to first ensure they’ve got engagement and have already been creating good content on the platform.

True collaboration means creating content together. Again, the content you create will be tailor-made to the platform. So, if you’re trying to master Instagram, you’d do live video together or consistently appear in each others’ stories, or do Instagram takeovers.

If you’re writing on LinkedIn as Swish and his collaborators are doing, you’d co-author LinkedIn posts. In fact, by using this method, Swish and his cohort of collaborators grew their LinkedIn followings exponentially.

Social Entrepreneurship and Youth

Swish is more than just a social media influencer. He’s also a tech entrepreneur, but if you ask him he still identifies most as a social entrepreneur. So, what is social entrepreneurship and what does it mean to Millennials and Gen Z?

The traditional mega-corporations have latched onto the idea of appearing to be altruistic. But when Swish does consulting work with corporations like American Express or Goldman Sachs he tries to instill in them how youth think about social entrepreneurship. Why? Young people have grown up in a rich social media landscape and they prioritize social good. They even feel it’s as important as profit in many cases.

Swish points out that the average social media using millennial follows 3 to 5 philanthropic pages on Instagram. This illustrates a deep truth about our minds: the existence of “mirror neurons.”

People get the same feeling when witnessing empathetic acts as do the giver and the receiver. We’ve long known that both giving and receiving feel good, but with the discovery of mirror neurons we now understand that even third parties benefit from giving.

Companies need to understand this dynamic and how much youth prioritize social giving. They then need to formulate their social media strategies to connect with this truth.

Guest Bio — Swish Goswami

Manu (Swish) Goswami has built a multi-hyphenate career. He is a serial tech entrepreneur (COO & Co-Founder of Dunk), LinkedIn Youth Editor, TEDx speaker, Fortune 500 consultant (for Google and American Express), venture capitalist (at JB Fitzgerald Venture Capital founded by Brooklyn Nets PF Trevor Booker), and UN Youth Ambassador. Swish has been recognized with the United Nations Outstanding Youth Leadership Award, Startup Canada’s Young Entrepreneur Award, and as one of Plan Canada’s Top 20 under 20.